The Monroe, La.-based provider has joined the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Building Challenge, which encourages corporate and public sector leaders to save energy through commitments and investments. It’s part of President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan to double American energy productivity by 2030.
Through the initiative, CenturyLink — which offers hybrid IT solutions including colocation, managed hosting, cloud and network services for business customers — commits to cutting its energy costs and carbon transmissions across its 34 U.S. data centers.
That commitment could be attractive to customers, said Faisal Chaudhry, CEO of Spearhead Group, a top CenturyLink data center partner based in Campbell, Calif. When a customer is selecting a data center provider, sustainability is a big focus — especially in the enterprise space, he said.
“Our customers aren’t just looking for the cheapest data centers, they are looking for something that is going to be highly reliable and sustainable, so we think [CenturyLink’s] effort is great,” Chaudhry said.
For Phoenix-based Avnet, a technology distribution provider of hybrid data center solutions, CenturyLink has been an important strategic data center partner, said Tim FitzGerald, vice president of cloud solutions and channel ecosystem strategist for the company.
Data center power is a huge cost component that affects the expense associated with deploying workloads outside of a customer’s own data center, FitzGerald said. So the initiative shows that CenturyLink has an eye on efficiency for its customers and partners — as well as consideration for the environment, he said.
“We are excited about the spirit of innovation that CenturyLink continues to demonstrate in the cloud and colocation [space],” FitzGerald said. “Being environmentally friendly offers a feel-good component … and it prompts tangible business impact for customers’ workloads in CenturyLink’s data centers — we feel that is very significant.”
